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TOKENHAM showjumper Jess Mendoza is looking forward to competing on home soil ahead of next week's Olympia London International Horse Show. During the competition, which runs from Tuesday to Thursday, Mendoza will be taking nine-year-old Horst and Toy Boy, eight, to The Grand Hall for the first time.

The big news to come out of the Federation Equestre Internationale General Assembly, held Nov. 19-22 in Tokyo, was the move to three-man teams at the Olympic Games, but a slew of other rule changes were up for vote, and some of the changes will have a dramatic impact on sport at the 2018 FEI World Equestrian Games, which will take place at the Tryon International Equestrian Center in Mill Spring, N.C. In show jumping, there will no longer be a "final four" competition that calls for the top four riders to switch horses to determine the individual medals. Instead, athletes will contest two rounds of team competition followed by two rounds of individual jumping.

THE achievements of Olympic and Paralympic medal-winning athletes from a district with a population of about 90,000 have been celebrated with the unveiling of a town centre tribute. Northallerton 's Town Square has been renamed Olympic Square in honour of Para-rower Laurence Whitleley, from the town - who took the gold medal in Rio for the trunks and arms mixed double sculls - and three-day eventer Nicola Wilson, of nearby Morton on Swale, who took silver with the equestrian team in 2012.

The Olympic champions, who won gold in the women's 470 sailing class in Rio, have been shortlisted for an award at The Sunday Times Sportswomen of the Year Awards 2016. They will go up against boxer Nicola Adams, equestrian star Charlotte Dujardin, rowers Helen Glover and Heather Stanning, taekwondo gold medalist Jade Jones and cyclist Laura Trott.

Germany is to lose its eventing coach from January 2017 with the news that Christopher Bartle has taken up a new role with British Eventing. Bartle has been confirmed in the newly created role of Performance Coach as part of the World Class eventing Programme.

Top riders William Funnell and Jennie Loriston-Clarke are to take up "important roles" at the first London Spring International Horse Show. Event director Daniel Watson confirmed four-time Olympian Jennie as the show's honorary president, and European team gold medallist William as a jumping ambassador.

The British event rider and her husband Mike, a former England rugby player, will welcome their new baby in the late spring and are said to be thrilled with the news. Zara had her first child, daughter Mia, on 17 January 2014.

Zara Phillips and daughter Mia Tindall pose for a photograph after husband Ex England rugby star Mike Tindall finished the grueling Artemis Great Kindrochit Quadrathlon in Loch Tay Scotland on July 11, 2015 in Aberfeldy, Scotland. Zara Phillips, pregnant with her first child with rugby player and husband Mike Tindall leave Chapel Royal in St James's Palace in central London after the Christening of Prince George of Cambridge on October 23, 2013.